Cowboy Rebel--Includes a bonus short story Read online

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by Carolyn Brown

  Preview of Christmas with a Cowboy copyright © 2019 by Carolyn Brown

  A Wedding on Lavender Hill copyright © 2019 by Annie Rains

  Cover design by Elizabeth Stokes

  Cover copyright © 2019 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

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  Hachette Book Group

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  First ebook edition: May 2019

  Forever is an imprint of Grand Central Publishing. The Forever name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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  ISBNs: 978-1-5387-4871-8 (mass market), 978-1-5387-4870-1 (ebook)

  E3-20190410-DANF

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Dear Readers

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Discover More

  High Praise for Carolyn Brown

  Also by Carolyn Brown

  About the Author

  Preview of Christmas with a Cowboy

  A Wedding on Lavender Hill

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  “This wasn’t a date,” she said.

  Tag’s hands cupped her face, thumbs brushing her cheeks. His palm felt like feathers dancing across the sensitive place on her neck. He leaned in for the kiss, and Nikki went up on her tiptoes.

  She had been kissed before. She’d had long-term relationships. She’d had her heart broken more than once since she’d lived on her own. She’d made mistakes and learned from them. But nothing prepared her for the way she felt when Tag’s lips met hers. The whole world disappeared in a flash, leaving only the two of them standing on a small upstairs porch with the moon and stars above them.

  When the kiss ended, Tag took a step back and braced himself on the railing. “If that affected you the way it did me, then, darlin’, this was definitely a date.”

  To my cousins

  Marthanna Goshorn and Brenda Long,

  who love cowboys as much as I do!!

  Explore book giveaways, sneak peeks, deals, and more.

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  Dear Readers,

  As I finish Cowboy Rebel, fall is arriving in Sunset, Texas, where the Longhorn Canyon Ranch is located. Y’all will be reading it just as summer is starting, so grab a glass of sweet tea, curl up on a porch swing, and enjoy the story. I was privileged to get to see the cover for this book before I even began to write it. Tag Baker was exactly as I’d pictured him in my mind—blue eyed, hair just a little too long, a slight cleft in his chin, and a swagger to his walk. That last part I couldn’t actually see in the picture, but my imagination is very good when it comes to cowboys!

  As always, I have a bushel basket of thanks to pass out today. The first one goes to all my fantastic fans who continue to support me by not only buying my books, but also by recommending them to their friends, talking about them at book clubs, writing reviews, and sending notes and messages to me personally. Please know that each and every one of you is precious and appreciated more than you’ll ever know.

  If my thanks were medals instead of heartfelt gratitude, Leah Hultenschmidt would get a gold one for everything she does to help me take a rough idea and turn it into an emotionally charged book. And my team at Grand Central/Forever, who do everything from copyedits to covers, promotions to sales, would have medals hanging around their necks for all their hard work behind the scenes.

  As always, there are no words to truly say how much I appreciate my agent, Erin Niumata, and the staff at Folio Literary Management. Y’all are simply the best and deserve a bushel basket of thanks all of your own.

  Last, but never least—thank you to my husband of fifty-two years, Mr. B. He’s stood beside me through the thick and the thin of this writing career and continues to be my biggest supporter.

  Keep your reading glasses close by after you finish Cowboy Rebel, because there’s more on the way. Maverick tells me that he’s feeling the magic of Christmas in the air, and Paxton and Hud are trying to convince me that they’re not ever going to fall in love. Shhhh…don’t tell anyone, but I know better.

  Until next time, happy reading!

  Carolyn Brown

  Chapter One

  What can I get you, cowboy?” The cute blonde whipped a towel from her hip pocket and wiped down the bar in front of him.

  He tipped his cowboy hat back just a little so he could see her better. “A double shot of Knob Creek. Where’s Joe tonight?”

  “He works Saturday. I get Thursday and Friday,” she answered. “Haven’t seen you before.”

  “I only moved here a couple of months ago. My brother and I usually come in on Saturday nights. But we might change our days.” He winked.

  “Oh, and why’s that?” She set his whiskey in front of him.

  “You’re prettier than Joe.”

  “I’ve heard that line before.” She moved down the bar to draw up another beer for the woman sitting at the far end and then worked her way back down to him, her ponytail flipping back and forth as she went from customer to customer.

  “Ready for another?” she asked when she was in front of him.

  “Not yet. This stuff is sippin’ whiskey, so I enjoy it a little at a time.”

  The folks between him and the woman down on the end were quick to leave the bar when Jake Owen’s “Down to the Honkytonk” started playing on the jukebox. They soon formed a line dance, and the noise of their boots on the wood floor competed with the loud song.

 
; He motioned for the bartender to bring him another drink and had just taken the first sip when a big, burly man burst into the bar and stormed across the floor with his hands knotted into fists the size of Christmas hams.

  “I knew I’d find you here,” the guy yelled above the music and dancers when he reached Tag.

  The man bumped Tag on the shoulder when he passed by him. Tag spilled the rest of his whiskey down the front of his shirt. In Tag’s way of thinking, it was a shame to waste even a drop of good Knob Creek.

  He spun around on the barstool. “Hey, now.”

  “I’m not talkin’ to you, so turn around and shut up. I’m talkin’ to my woman down there.” He pointed to the other end of the bar. “When she gets mad at me, she always shows up here.”

  “Well, you spilled my drink, so you should buy me another one,” Tag said.

  “I ain’t buyin’ you jack shit.” The guy took a few steps and grabbed the woman by the arm. “Come on, Scarlett, we’re goin’ home.”

  She slid off the stool, shook off his hand, and got right up nose to nose with him. “I’m not going anywhere with you. If you want a woman, go get Ramona. I’m goin’ to finish my drink and then have another one or two.”

  “I told you that she was a mistake. I broke up with her weeks ago, so don’t give me that old shit.” He drew back his hand as if to slap her, but instead grabbed a handful of her hair and jerked her to his chest. “I said you’re coming home. I made a mistake but so did you. I wasn’t the only one cheatin’, and I damn sure wasn’t the first one.”

  A bouncer who looked more like a strutting little banty rooster hurried across the room, got between them, and demanded that the guy leave. Tag could see from the fire in the bigger man’s eyes that he wasn’t going anywhere. And the stance that the bouncer had taken said he wasn’t backing down either. It wasn’t one bit of Tag’s business, but the man had caused him to spill whiskey on his favorite shirt. While he slid off the stool, the jukebox began to blast out Trace Adkins singing “Whoop a Man’s Ass.” Now, that was an omen to Tag’s way of thinking, especially when the words said something about cussin’ and roughin’ up a lady.

  He took a few long strides and stood beside the bouncer. “The lady says that she’s not going home with you,” Tag said. “It’d be wise if you just scooted on out of here.”

  The big fellow put his hands on Tag’s chest and pushed. Tag grabbed for anything that would keep him from falling and got a handful of a shirt. The bouncer fell into the woman and they fell into a pile. Before Tag could get out of the tangle of arms and legs and find his hat, Scarlett kicked the man in the knee about a half dozen times. He went down like a big oak tree, landing to one side of the pile.

  “You bitch,” he growled as he popped up to a sitting position and grabbed a beer bottle from a nearby table, slammed it on the floor, shattering the bottom half into a million pieces. “You know that’s my bum knee.” He drew back the bottle to hit her with it, but she ducked.

  The bottle slashed right across Tag’s chiseled jawline. Tag had always considered himself a lover, not a fighter, but there was something about his own blood dripping on his new Western shirt that brought out the anger. Then he noticed that his best cowboy hat was now ruined with beer splatter and cast-off blood drops. He popped up on his feet, hands clenched in fists, ready to fight, but the bouncer had brought out an equalizer in the form of a Taser. A picture of David in the Bible came to Tag’s mind as the man dropped to the floor and began to quiver. Amazing what a rock and a slingshot or a little jolt of electricity in today’s world could do to a giant.

  “You’ve killed my husband! He’s got a bad heart,” Scarlett screamed. “I’ll sue the whole damn lot of you! Call an ambulance!”

  “No!” the big man yelled from the floor, where he was still twitching. “Take me home. Cops will haul me into jail for assault on that cowboy.”

  Through a red haze of anger and pain, Tag could see that the bartender was already on the phone. He picked up his hat, settled it on his head, and slipped out of the bar before anyone could rope him into testifying or giving his story.

  “Glad I didn’t drive my motorcycle tonight,” he grumbled as he got into his black Silverado.

  He removed his plaid shirt and held pressure on the cut with one hand while he started the truck engine with the other. The hospital emergency room was the first place he’d checked out when he’d moved to Montague County the previous month. That information was pretty damned important when he lived by the words of his two bumper stickers. One said ONCE A REBEL, ALWAYS A REBEL. The other was the title of Tim McGraw’s country song LIVE LIKE YOU WERE DYING.

  He’d barely gotten out on the highway when blood started to seep through his fingertips and drip onto his snowy white T-shirt. He hoped that the doctor would throw some superglue and bandages on it and that it would heal up without too much of a scar.

  The only parking place he could find was all the way across the lot. By the time he made it to the door in the heat, he was getting more than a little woozy. The walls of the empty emergency room did a couple of wavy spins when he stepped inside. A nurse looked up from the desk and yelled something, but it sounded like it was coming through a barrel full of water.

  Then suddenly someone shoved him into a wheelchair, took him into a curtained examination area, helped him up onto a narrow bed, and turned on a bright light above his head. He expected to see his whole life begin to flash before his eyes any minute, but instead Nikki Grady, his sister’s best friend, took the shirt from his hand.

  “Want me to call Emily?” she asked.

  “Hell no! Call Hud. His number is on the speed dial on my phone. It’s in my hip pocket,” he muttered.

  “What happened?” she asked. “Looks like you were the only one at a knife fight without a knife.”

  “Beer bottle.” Tag tried to grin but it hurt like hell. “Just glue me up. Give it a kiss to help it heal and call my brother Hud.”

  “Honey, with this much blood loss and the fact that I’m lookin’ at your bone, it’s goin’ to take more than glue and a kiss,” Nikki said.

  Taggart, or Tag as the family called him, was one of those men who turned every woman’s eye when he walked into a place—even a hospital emergency room. The nurses, old and young alike, were buzzing about him before Nikki even got him into the cubicle. With that chiseled face, those piercing blue eyes, a cowboy swagger, and a smile that would make a religious woman want to drink whiskey and do the two-step, it’s a wonder he hadn’t already put one of those “take a number and wait” machines on the front porch post of his house.

  “The doctor is on his way. He just finished stitchin’ up a patient with a knife wound. From the looks of you, I’d think you’d been in on that fight.” Nikki applied pressure to the cut with a wad of gauze.

  The curtain between the cubicles flew to one side, and a white-coated guy came over to the bed. “What have we got here? I’m Dr. Richards.” He gently lifted the edge of the gauze. “Knife?”

  “Beer bottle,” Tag said.

  “Well, the first thing we have to do is shave off that scruff. Deaden it up and then shave off the area around it, Nikki. I’ll take care of the kid who thought he could ride his skateboard down a slide, and I’ll be right back,” Dr. Richards said.

  “Yes, sir.” Nikki nodded.

  The doctor had been instrumental in getting Nikki her first job as a registered nurse, and she really admired him. An older man with a white rim of hair around an otherwise bald head covered in freckles, he was the best when it came to stitches, in Nikki’s opinion. Tag was a lucky cowboy that Dr. Richards was on call that night. It could have been an intern doing the embroidery on his face, and it would be such a shame to leave a scar on something that sexy.

  “You still going to go out with me even though I’m clean shaven and got a scar?” Tag asked her as she prepared to shave part of his face.

  “If I don’t work, I don’t eat, and I’m real fond of cheeseburgers,�
�� she answered.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” He winced when she picked up a needle to start the local anesthetic.

  “That I don’t have time to take a number and wait in line behind all those other women wanting to get a chance at taming you,” she answered.

  He wrapped his hand around her wrist before she started. “I’d move you to the front of the line, darlin’.”

  “Well, ain’t that sweet.” She patted his hand and ignored the heat between them. “But, honey, you’re way too fast for this little country girl. Now be still and let me get this ready for Dr. Richards.”

  Without blinking, he focused on her face as she sank the needle into several places to deaden the two-inch cut. Whispers of other conversations penetrated the curtains on either side of Tag’s cubicle, but heavy silence filled the space while Nikki put in the last shot.

  “That all?” he finally asked, but his piercing blue eyes didn’t leave her face.

  “Except for cleaning up around it,” she answered. “And you were a good boy. I’ll tell Dr. Richards to give you a lollipop before you leave.”

  “It ain’t my first rodeo,” he said. “Did you call Hud?”

  “Not yet,” she said.

  “Then don’t.”

  “With the amount of blood you’ve lost and the shot doc will probably give you for pain, you’ll need a driver or you won’t be released,” she said. “So it’s Hud or Emily. Take your choice.”

  “You’re a hard woman, Nikki,” he said.

  “And you’re a hardheaded man,” she shot back as she carefully shaved the scruff from around the wound.

  “We ready to fix this cowboy up?” Dr. Richards threw back the curtain. “What’d the other guy look like?”

  “Not a scratch on him, but he was limpin’. His woman tried to kick his kneecap halfway to Georgia,” Tag answered.

  Dr. Richards chuckled. “And I bet you were defendin’ her in some way.”

  Tag grimaced when he tried to smile. “Just helpin’ out the bouncer a little. Seemed like the thing to do since ‘Whoop a Man’s Ass’ was playin’ on the jukebox.”